In July 1816 the French frigate Medusa, carrying officials to Senegal, ran aground off the African coast. About a hundred and fifty people were set adrift on a makeshift raft; thirteen days later fifteen remained alive. The ship’s surgeon and an engineer who survived describe the mutiny, starvation and cannibalism on the raft, the trek across the desert and the aftermath at St Louis.
The account that scandalised France and inspired Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa. Download the free EPUB.